Quote

our nerve filaments twitch with its presence day and night, nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying, nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.

Denise Levertov

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Denise Levertov
Age: 74 †
Born: 1923
Born: October 24
Died: 1997
Died: December 20
Poet
Translator
Writer
Ilford
London
Priscilla D Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertov
Would
Deep
Husky
Mankind
Twitch
Saying
Huskies
Peace
Quickness
Living
Nerve
War
Nerves
Night
Presence
Phlegm
Nothing
Intelligence
Sureness

More quotes by Denise Levertov

Image
Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
Denise Levertov
Image
Love is a landscape the long mountains define but don't shut off from the unseeable distance.
Denise Levertov
Image
Images split the truth in fractions.
Denise Levertov
Image
Do you mistake me? I am speaking of living, of moving from one moment into the next, and into the one after, breathing death in the spring air.
Denise Levertov
Image
I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
Denise Levertov
Image
You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.
Denise Levertov
Image
In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
Denise Levertov
Image
There's in my mind a... turbulent moon-ridden girl or old woman, or both, dressed in opals and rags, feathers and torn taffeta, who knows strange songs but she is not kind.
Denise Levertov
Image
And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
Denise Levertov
Image
But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
Denise Levertov
Image
Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.
Denise Levertov
Image
The AvowalAs swimmers dareto lie face to the skyand water bears them,as hawks rest upon airand air sustains themso would I learn to attain freefall, and floatinto Creator Spirit's deep embrace,knowing no effort earnsthat all-surrounding grace.
Denise Levertov
Image
Both art and faith are dependent on imagination both are ventures into the unknown.
Denise Levertov
Image
The threat of world's end is the old threat.
Denise Levertov
Image
An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other than happiness itself, a breathing too quiet to hear.
Denise Levertov
Image
What joy when the insouciant armadillo glances at us and doesn't quicken his trotting across the track into the palm brush. What is this joy? That no animal falters, but knows what it must do?
Denise Levertov
Image
I'll dig in into my days, having come here to live, not to visit. Grey is the price of neighboring with eagles, of knowing a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.
Denise Levertov
Image
blue bead on the wick, there's that in me that burns and chills, blackening my heart with its soot, I think sometimes not Apollo heard me but a different god.
Denise Levertov
Image
Let the space under the first storey be dark, let the water lap the stone posts, and vivid green slime glimmer upon them let a boat be kept there.
Denise Levertov
Image
One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.
Denise Levertov